“The lost generation”, a term coined by Gertrude Stein, acts as a critique on the pre and post WWI society of the 1920’s. Stein, alongside other Modernist writers such as Faulkner and Hemingway, explored this notion of a “lost generation” living in an insignificant world. To them, they were members of a struggling modern age, trying to find meaning in a context that was virtually meaningless. Perhaps we can say the same thing about Willa Cather in The Professor’s House, a text that deals with problems, incoherencies, catastrophes, and textual breaks. These fragmentations and losses found in the narrative can be viewed as a kind of critique or commentary of Cather’s time, perhaps a time she considered empty of meaning.
The most blatant topic of loss manifests in Godfrey’s character. We witness as his family, marriage, and homes all destabilize, but most importantly, as he copes with the death of Tom, his favorite student. Godfrey’s damaged character, in this way, represents a broken reality, and reflects the losses of modernity. Fragmentation exists in the text’s form as well. The chapter of “Tom Outland’s Story” acts as a fracture between its surrounding two chapters, breaking the narrative’s general flow. While many have criticized Cather for this structural inconsistency in the text, disrupting both its narrative discourse and textual form, it actually functions as a reflection of modern society’s disruption and disorder. World War I and the vanishing Cliff City’s people are also a part of the theme of loss and breakage. 20th century Modernism, to Cather, greatly lacks inherent significance.
While Cather may be criticizing the Modernist era, she is also acting as a true Modernist author while doing so. Modernist literature involves a whole lot of cynicism, advocates a sense of mistrust among its readers, and seeks to depart from traditional ideas. By commenting on Modernism through the use of literary breaks and fragmentations, Cather engenders a sense of apprehension and distrust among readers, a reaction not uncommon among readers of Modernism.
I like what you have to say about the fragments within the text as an expression of Cather's Modernist tendencies-- but how does the storyline itself express the deep discontent with the human race that so many other Modernists express?
ReplyDeleteI too was struck by the structure of the novel and commented on it in my blog post. While I looked at it in terms of what it meant on the level of the story, how Tom (part 2) serves to break the relationships between the family (part 1) and the professor (part 3), I appreciate how you saw the same structural fragmentation as it applied to the Modernist time in which Cather lived and wrote.
ReplyDeleteI was struck by this comment in particular, Shalvi:
ReplyDelete"By commenting on Modernism through the use of literary breaks and fragmentations, Cather engenders a sense of apprehension and distrust among readers"
I'm curious--what is this relationship that you see between an art of "breaks and fragmentations" and "a sense of apprehension and distrust among readers"? Why the connection? I'm not saying you are wrong, but I don't quite follow your logic there.
I like what you said about the breaks within the structure reflect breaks within society. You tied it in very nicely to the Modernist era. Do you think Tom reflected a loss of meaning then, or a person who experienced loss? I had thought of him as the latter, but after reading your thoughts on Cather's critique on society, perhaps he is the former.
ReplyDelete